I started this as an answer to Dennis’ comment below, but it was so long I decided to post it.
So, Robyn, are you saying that the URL of your blog and the name of your blog has to incorporate your primary keywords in order to achieve top page rank in Google? Does that mean that with my blog I am destined always to be retrieved by university students studying how a certain fast food company manages itself?
The url is imporant, and can make you rank higher, faster, but notice I am ranked #1 for ‘practical blogging’ and my url is sleepyblogger. Note my title tags are ‘practical blogging’. These are much more important.
Of course, the fact that my blog is titled ‘practical blogging’ as the header (not an image) on the entire blog helps too. It’s one of the first things the bots see, after my title tags.
Your title tags should reflect your content. For a while my title tags said “Practical Blogging | Affiliate Tips” and I ranked on page 1 on google within about 3 months for ‘affiliate tips’ Never made it to #1 on those keywords (much more competitive) but still made in on page 1, so title tags are hugely imporation.
In addition to heavy content, frequent posts, and other html tags, you can rank high pretty fast, if you create an SEO strategy and use it to help you write.
Robyn –
I’ve made some changes on my main page based on your comments, thanks.
An additional idea is to make sure index pinging is appropriate.
My blog is composed of separate “journals” and all sections — except one — were set to ping indexes with their own main page address information, rather than the blog’s main address.
I recently discovered that the newest section, the one that reports on my “Web 2.0 Management Survey,” was not pinging with the name of its own main page but with the main page of the blog; this may have reduced the frequency of the new section’s indexing.
This does get complicated!
One note on rankings. What you call yourself when you link to your site elsewhere matters too. Since I often title my links Practical Blogging, that has added to my SEO strategy.